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DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has purchased the LA Clippers for a whopping $2 billion, also setting a new record price for an NBA team. This deal is apparently tentative until Donald Sterling gives his blessing. Twenty-nine other NBA owners need to offer their approval as well, but that shouldn't be a problem as long as Ballmer reaffirms his commitment of keeping the Clippers in Los Angeles. Interestingly, Donald Sterling had purchased the team back in June of 1981 for $12.5 million." We talked about this earlier in the week when rumors of the purchase started circulating.

Sterling acquired the Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million, and as of 2014, the team is valued at $575 million by Forbes magazine [...]

So, this guy makes incredibly racist remarks, and he gets rewarded by a payout worth nearly 4x the value of his team?

Ballmer should have lowballed the sleaze bag and refused to give him even the amount is was valued at. And that's the least he should've done. Never entering into business with him at all would have been preferable, but Ballmer was never known for having an awareness of how things might be perceived or a sense of what is tasteful.

I can only guess that the NBA has talked to their attorneys and found out their ability to strip Sterling of his ownership was more complicated and expensive than they thought, compounded by the fact that I think its tied up with his wife and their divorce proceedings. At a minimum Sterling is very rich, very old and probably willing to make it very expensive for the NBA to force his hand. If it's uncertain you will prevail against an adversary capable and likely willing to throw $250 million at lawyers to defeat you, you give in. Even if they would have ultimately won, Sterling could have cost the league many millions and years to achieve their goal.

The upshot being Sterling could demand whatever he wanted to sell the team. The NBA, wanting to be rid of Sterling, was probably more than willing to greenlight a sale to the right buyer -- someone of standing who also had no problem financing the buyout.

There was talk of A-list black celebrities buying the team, but that kind of financing gets complicated -- I don't think any of them individually have the kind of cash to finance a buyout easily, requiring a complex partnership/investment ownership which I think most sports leagues don't favor. I'd also guess that even if a single buyer in this category could have financed this solo (Oprah's net is sub-$3 billion, but probably highly illiquid) they would then be facing a lot of negative PR for agreeing to any terms of Sterling's.

I'd also guess that the NBA may have also agreed to some kind of long-term bump in TV money to offset Ballmer's price tag. This way Ballmer actually pays less for the team while not making it look like the NBA was being forced to buy Sterling out at his price, which would have been negative PR, making them look like they were capitulating to him.

It's likely the only reason the NBA is so angry about this, is because they wanted to kick him out anyway. They were just looking for an excuse. In other words, the NBA doesn't care if he is punished or not, as long as he loses the team.

Very few people want to live in a world where everyone is free to do whatever they want. There's even a logical contradiction in the idea of total freedom: am I free to restrict your freedom?

Many libertarians like the idea of using "property rights" to restrict freedom (you can't walk across this land because I "own" it, you can't punch me in the face because I "own" it, etc.). Of course, that means that rich people have a greater ability to restrict other people's freedom than poor people.

Many libertarians like the idea of using "property rights" to restrict freedom (you can't walk across this land because I "own" it, you can't punch me in the face because I "own" it, etc.). Of course, that means that rich people have a greater ability to restrict other people's freedom than poor people.

Pretty much every major system of government has the result that rich people have a greater ability to restrict other peoples' freedom than poor people.

The only counterexamples I can think of would be the idealized/never-implemented pure Communism. The system of government helps determine who becomes rich, to some extent.

Yeah, you can legislate moral acts, but you can't (with successful effect) legislate moral thinking or any kind of thinking. What is truly depressing and frightening is that idiots constantly TRY to legislate/mandate moral THINKING.

They can have one of those fan contests where a fan goes onto the court and tries to do something to win a prize. Only instead of taking a shot from half court, they'll need to throw more chairs than Ballmer or Knight.

He is the former CEO of a company that was formerly one of the most successful. Slashdot doesn't seem to have a sports category, so I guess that's why it's listed under "The Almighty Dollar". Even if it did, I wouldn't want to read it. This is the kind of story that is fine to be left to mainstream news outlets.

This is the kind of story that is fine to be left to mainstream news outlets.

Meh, it's an okay story for/. AS LONG AS we don't get 5,000 follow-up stories, several per week, about what mundane thing Balmer and the Clippers happen to be doing... Ala Steve Jobs/Apple, Elon Musk/Tesla/SpaceX, the latest mundane global warming paper, and many, many others.

Worst CEO of all time? geez most CEO's would give their right arm to be half as successful as he has been since he became CEO. Profits, revenue and sales all increased under him year on year with very good growth across the board while not allowing costs to blow out. Yes he had plenty of failures but from a business standpoint he has actually been a massive success for them with his successes far outweighing the failures, could he have been more successful with a few smarter choices, SURE, but very few CEO's have outperformed him over the past decade or so.

No I think his biggest problem was that he inherited a company that had a shareprice that was at the time massively overinflated, It masked much of his success of the following decade as people would point at the shareprice and claim he was failing even though financially he was providing excellent growth. He did more than just be a caretaker, he significantly diversified the company while still maintaining a solid to excellent (though not shooting star) growth throughout his time at the helm. I will agree

Of course, for us mundanes, the expectations are about as far out as they can be so that bonus is virtually impossible to get. In other words, if you want to see that carrot dangling, bring your telescope.

Just as long as you don't compare his performance to that of Apple, Google, or Facebook and completely ignore the failures in the longhorn, vista, windows Mobile, windows tablet, MS hailstorm, MSN Live, Bing, windows RT, Surface, Windows 8 and the decline of the PC form factor. Then yeah, he did great.

I don't blame him for 2001 or a short time after. However his tenure was flat for a *very* long time, during which several notable competitors outperformed him by a lot.

I think people are a little hard on Ballmer sometimes, but there are lots of realistic measures where he's not wildly successful. And frankly, you pay CEOs what they get paid expecting wild success (Ballmer did request a relatively low salary as major CEOs go, with cash well-under

Stock price isn't actually a particularly good measure in the case of MS unless you also factor in P/E ratios, When balmer took over they were trading at a P/E ratio of around 40-45. That isn't a realistic number for any company unless they are expecting meteoric growth numbers which given the valuation at the time was just not possible or sustainable, they would have to have grown to well in excess of being a trillion dollar company today to justify that number or to put in perspective they would need to be worth more than apple and google combined. MS currently trade at P/E ratio of around 15.

Given the dotcom bubble I thought it would be unfair too. But if you look at just large cap tech, it's nowhere near as bad as what happened to the pure-play dotcoms and networkers:

Over the same time frame:Oracle: $86B -> $185BApple: $18B -> $547BHP: $45B -> $64BAnd of course IPOs that happened a couple years later like Google and Salesforce were multi-baggers.

So comparing the peak mkt cap of the bubble is actually not that unfair. Considering Microsoft had a monopoly in 2000 and couldn't even maintain a constant enterprise value over 14 years, again, I wouldn't call that a "wildly successful" performance by the CEO.

One has to wonder if Donald Sterling would have received this much money for his team without a scandal? It appears to me that he greatly profited from the scandal.

Without the scandal it wouldn't have been sold until after his death.

Almost certainly the scandal would have depressed the price if it changed it at all, I don't see how it made the Clippers more valuable. The longer Sterling held onto the Clippers the more they became associated with racism and the more the brand was damaged. Sterling had to sell quick and that meant the pool of potential buyers were whomever could scrape the cash on short notice. I don't expect it made a big dent in the final price but it probably depressed it a bit.

at least we in the tech industry can be thankful that the NBA & LA community will now have to put up with Ballmer's antics

what if it was the reverse?

successful athletes, coaches, and celebrities bought up startups with their big spending...

can you imagine a consortium of Oprah, Magic Johnson, and some Goldman/Sach's types buying facebook.com from Zuck & Co when it was still valued in the low millions before they got on their IPO track w/ Theil?

at least we in the tech industry can be thankful that the NBA & LA community will now have to put up with Ballmer's antics

what if it was the reverse?

successful athletes, coaches, and celebrities bought up startups with their big spending...

can you imagine a consortium of Oprah, Magic Johnson, and some Goldman/Sach's types buying facebook.com from Zuck & Co when it was still valued in the low millions before they got on their IPO track w/ Theil?

It probably wouldn't work.

Owning a sports franchise is basically a vanity project. Hire a GM to handle the drafts, trades, and contracts, other folks to handle the marketing, then you basically get to be a super fan who has a legit stake in the team. You don't need to evaluate whether your basketball team should open up a hockey team as well, or if you should only start four players to save on costs. You don't even really need to make money because you're a fan and doing it for fun.

I suppose Sterling has cut a loathsome figure, but how many players do the same? Do you think if a survey was made of social media and other outlets, that one could easily find instances of players making racist comments, using foul language, and paying for lurid PDA encounters with every flavor of the week? Just seems like if equal protection were to be applied, then lots of players would be paying fines, being banned, and losing rings and trophies.

Also, the rest of the NBA chose to exercise their free speech by disassociating from him under the terms of the franchise that he *voluntarily* agreed to. Why do you hate contracts?

Really? You think he agreed to bullshit terms that limited his right to have thoughts and opinions and to reveal them in PRIVATE CONVERSATION never intended for publication? I suppose it's possible. The plague of PC-think is not to be underestimated.

This is an *offer*. I had a feeling that Sterling was trying to negotiate in the press when he pointed out he's been offered as much as $2.5B (probably a lie). I don't think he's as dead set against the sale as he says. We'll see that when he gets the price he was asking for.

Looks like Steve Ballmer saw John Hodgman's arguments for buying the LA Clippers and took him seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Now Ballmer can have his very own herd of humans.

Watching the news tonight the anchor said he offered 1.8 million. I kept watching for her to realize she blew it. Nothing. I backed it up and rewatched it, she definately said million, not billion.
News today really sucks:(

"Players, players, players..."; but he'll charge them $3000 to see the contract. Chair-throwing at every game of course. Best of all, slightly different and inferior version of plays used by the Lakers. Also, brown uniforms.

OK. I'm done now. No, wait. Spy devices embedded in every ticket, which may or may not get you into the arena due to various glitches.

$12.5M in 1981 would only be worth $32.6M today (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=12500&year1=1981&year2=2014). While that's certainly nothing to scoff at, back in 1981, it seems that an NBA franchise was well within the range of many 1%ers, whereas today it seems that a franchise is really only in the domain of the 0.01%. What I can't figure out is, what happened to NBA (and sports franchises in general) over the last 33 years to have out-paced inflation by so much? Even if you think Ba

LOL, he must be jealous of Paul Allen owning the Blazers. Ballmer will never be as awesome as Allen of course, and Allen being on a recent Portlandia skit was side-splittingly funny...“I brought this idea to my financial advisors and they said no,” Allen said. “But I’m hoping you say yes.” Funny for one he doesn't need anyone's money as he's super loaded, two the actual uniform has their airport code (PDX) and a horrid line drawing with a small campfire on it...sometimes Port

You might be shocked to find out, despite the stereotype, that a large number of nerds are interested in professional sports as well. When an important figure in technology buys a sports team, it is a newsworthy item. Otherwise, feel free to ignore stories that you personally don't find interesting going forward.

Not even sorta. He was a CEO. That it was a company dealing with "computer stuff" was mostly coincidental.

Most CEOs actually think that it really does not matter what they're selling, everything is sold the same way according to them. Yes, they don't have a clue what they're selling. They think they needn't have one.